Eight Cubic Meters by Claudia Sanchez: A bow is a bow es un lazo
Exhibition from 21 August until 17 September
Finissage: Thursday 17 September, 17.30h
How do objects acquire meaning? Are they shaped by function, ritual, labour, desire, or by the cultural narratives we repeatedly attach to them? Can we consciously re-signify a signifier?
Taking the bow as its point of departure, this project considers how an ordinary object becomes loaded with meaning and gender connotations. Before becoming a feminine ornament adorning hair and clothing, it existed as a practical knot: a utilitarian form used to fasten, secure and hold. Yet over time, this simple gesture became culturally charged with ideas of beauty, delicacy, innocence, obedience and femininity.
Rather than proposing alternative fixed meanings as protest, this installation questions historical meaning-making. Within this work, objects are understood as unstable cultural constructs whose significance can be continually negotiated, resisted and reimagined.
The installation proposes repetition not as the reproduction of existing meanings, but as a strategy for generating new ones. Through repetition, the bow is detached from its familiar context and from the associations normally imposed upon it. Gradually deprived of meaning, the bow is reduced into an empty shell.